On November 30, the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) started in Paris. After almost 20 years of climate talks, it is hoped that the international community will finally agree concerted action to tackle climate change. A good COP21 will mean that the Sustainable Development Goals are taken more seriously.
UBS | Last week’s 168th ordinary OPEC meeting in Vienna concluded without the group agreeing on any meaningful change in strategy. Contrary to an earlier wire report that the group was to lift its target outp ut ceiling to 31.5Mb/d the defining feature of the official release was the lack of any explicit reference to either the quota or to actual production.
James Alexander via Historinhas | While we firmly believe NGDP expectations are the best guide to monetary policy we are still some way from having a proper market measure of those expectations. However, two of the peripheral countries, Spain and Italy have now produced their first estimate of NGDP for 3Q.
Marc Chandler via Caixin | It is official. The yuan will be included in the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights (SDR). The 10.4 percent share is a bit more than I expected, but less than the 14 to 16 percent the IMF’s staff intimated a few months ago. This is a significant event, even if there is no short-term market opportunity.
Countries in the North don’t even want to talk about creating more inflation to help those in the South. Why should we, they say, if they are the debtors? Could they be persuaded that it is in their interests, given that the alternative could be default and the collapse of the eurzone economy and the euro? For the time being, they have allowed the ECB to work on moving away from zero inflation, but not beyond the 2% limit. And even this limit is not expected to be reached until 2017.
It’s not really surprising that Spain’s real estate market has become one of the most attractive in the world, given that property prices are still only slowly recovering from an almost 40 percent decline at the height of the crisis, and the country’s economy is now back on the path to growth.
The election of Mauricio Macri, the candidate for the Cambiemos (Let’s Change) coalition, as president has been welcomed as a potential turning point in Argentina’s financial, political and foreign policy outlooks. The country’s economic performance has been overshadowed by high inflation and isolation from global capital markets, and planned reforms will likely boost its exports and could accelerate investment in areas such as infrastructure and the nascent shale gas sector.
Nick Malkoutzis via Macropolis | An average of around 2,200 refugees and migrants have arrived on the shores of Greece’s eastern Aegean islands every day this year. Before being piled into rubber dinghies and other unsuitable vessels for the crossing, they purchase life vests from shops in Turkey.
Huo Kan and Wu Hongyuran via Caixin | China’s banks are successfully managing 1.92 trillion yuan worth of non-performing loans, but tomorrow could bring a flood of bad debt.